[SOLVED] Download speed is slow while playing certain Steam games

This is a weird one: When playing Steam games my download speed (everywhere) drops to a fraction of what it should be (roughly 1/10th). My upload speed is unaffected.
I don't know how long this has been the case but I think it's fairly recent since when playing games I often tab out and do stuff on the net. I would've noticed.
This doesn't happen with Portal 2, Civ V, Guacamelee or Xcom but does happen with Rochard, Steamworks Dig, Gateways (2d puzzle platformer) and Awesomenauts. I was looking for a pattern but I fail to see one.
To be clear about the problem: If I start one of those games and tab out my download speed is 1/10th what it should be. If I exit the game my download speed returns to normal instantly.
I've checked for obvious stuff like Steam downloading in the background (it's not and nor is anything else - no unusual network activity at all). I've checked for mere coincidence - signal dropping/interference and so on and that seems not to be it either. It's also far too consistent and, as I say, upload is unaffected for some reason.
I don't even know what info to give with this one or how to begin tracking it down so any advice will be received gratefully.
I'm running Arch 64bit, all up to date.
05:03.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g
Which I believe is using the rt61pci module.
Last edited by dgesh (2014-06-28 06:00:47)

Ok, well, I *think* I've sort of solved it:
I went through various wifi channels and found that the degree to which my download speed was reduced varied depending on the wifi channel I was on. So I left a game running and watched the download speed and the speed of my CPU and GPU as they clocked up/down and it seems that one of them is managing to interfere with the wifi signal. Or at least that's my best guess. High wifi channel numbers seem to be affected least (significantly so) so ... yeah.
I don't know if this makes sense technically (and no idea how I've never encountered it before) but... that's my guess.

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